No doubt many people will have been disappointed with the announcement by Apple that Siri will only become available for the new iPad, leaving those with older iPads or iPhone 4 or 3GS still without a virtual assistant.

However, last weekend Sparkling Apps has launched a major update of its popular Voice Answer app, which does work on those devices, and offers many of Siri’s features, plus a few of her own.

This update features Eve, a 3D animated robot that responds to your voice commands. She introduces herself in this video: http://youtu.be/zIU-gk2JTdA.

Voice Answer has struggled since January to get past Apple’s rigorous reviewers. It was rejected several times on the grounds that it looked “confusingly similar to Siri”. After months of tweaking, the first version was allowed on the App Store six weeks ago and was an instant hit.

Since then we have been frantically working to include all features that we omitted in the initial version.

These include many voice controlled actions such as texting, dialing, searching for nearby points of interest, as well as voice translation into over 50 languages. The most eye catching feature however is the 3D animated robot, which really places this app in a league of its own.

We feared that including all the voice controlled actions, including the ones also offered by Siri would be yet another reason for rejection by Apple. We were also anxious that Eve’s ample curves would upset some of Apple’s more puritan reviewers. Fortunately Apple seems to have relaxed its stance towards alternative voice controlled assistants somewhat and the app was approved for sale last night.

We will now press on for subsequent versions which will include even more animations and actions, more knowledge bases, integrate as many public data sources as possible and set the standard for alternative voice assistants for months to come.

No doubt many people will have been disappointed with the announcement by Apple that Siri will only become available for the new iPad, leaving those with older iPads or iPhone 4 or 3GS still without a virtual assistant.

However, last weekend Sparkling Apps has launched a major update of its popular Voice Answer app, which does work on those devices, and offers many of Siri’s features, plus a few of her own.

This update features Eve, a 3D animated robot that responds to your voice commands. She introduces herself in this video: http://youtu.be/zIU-gk2JTdA.

Voice Answer has struggled since January to get past Apple’s rigorous reviewers. It was rejected several times on the grounds that it looked “confusingly similar to Siri”. After months of tweaking, the first version was allowed on the App Store six weeks ago and was an instant hit.

Since then we have been frantically working to include all features that we omitted in the initial version.

These include many voice controlled actions such as texting, dialing, searching for nearby points of interest, as well as voice translation into over 50 languages. The most eye catching feature however is the 3D animated robot, which really places this app in a league of its own.

We feared that including all the voice controlled actions, including the ones also offered by Siri would be yet another reason for rejection by Apple. We were also anxious that Eve’s ample curves would upset some of Apple’s more puritan reviewers. Fortunately Apple seems to have relaxed its stance towards alternative voice controlled assistants somewhat and the app was approved for sale last night.

We will now press on for subsequent versions which will include even more animations and actions, more knowledge bases, integrate as many public data sources as possible and set the standard for alternative voice assistants for months to come.